


smoke and mirrors

by cougarlips



Category: Final Fantasy XIII
Genre: Canon Compliant, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, Illusions, POV Third Person, Platonic Relationships, badassery in general, vanille deserves better mostly tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-18
Updated: 2018-08-18
Packaged: 2019-06-29 01:44:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15719370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cougarlips/pseuds/cougarlips
Summary: If Fang could see her now, the woman would die of laughter. Vanille, weak? she’d laugh. If Vanille’s weak, I’m an Adamantortoise.





	smoke and mirrors

**Author's Note:**

> sometimes u just gotta read every wip and draft on your computer and ask yourself why u never posted something? bc that's me this weekend w everything i've uploaded so far lmao. this isn't really FINISHED but i also like how it ended so im just leaving it as it is
> 
> also just saying but when you replay xiii all of sazh's battle quotes when he and vanille are fighting through the sunleth to nautilus will make your heart hurt and that's absolutely what inspired this fic which i last updated, to the day, one year ago

_“Follow the old man’s lead!”_

_“Watch and learn, kid!”_

 

Vanille waited until Sazh was snoring before she snuck away from their campsite. Her skin itched with frustration, but she couldn’t do anything about it; she had a cover to keep. I’m weak, she told herself. I’m defenseless and need protection.

If Fang could see her now, the woman would die of laughter. _Vanille, weak?_ she’d laugh. _If Vanille’s weak, I’m an Adamantortoise_. And yet, as Vanille worked up the courage to tell Sazh the truth, as they neared ever closer to Nautilus, as she saw his determination to protect his son (from himself, she added painfully) her resolve wavered. She couldn’t tell him; she couldn’t prove to him that she was strong.

With all the prowess of a Pulsian, Vanille tiptoed through the tall grass until she felt far enough away from Sazh that she could hunt. The animals fought differently here in the Waterscape than they did on Bodhum -- they actually _fought_ , even if they didn’t have the ferocity of the creatures of Pulse -- but Vanille simply needed to fight. It had been almost two weeks since she and Fang split up at Euride, nearly two weeks of feigning innocence and easy distress.

She saw her target a mile off -- another oddity she wasn’t used to: dumb animals with no sense of danger -- and began stalking it. She crouched low and gripped her staff with both arms. The animal paid no mind to her as it ate the carcass of something she and Sazh took down earlier that morning.

Flexing the fingers on one of her hands, Vanille cast enfire, and with her rod imbued with fire, she hurled it towards the unsuspecting animal. It fell in one hit.

 

Vanille rinsed her hands at the waterside. She couldn’t have told you where she was, only that she was still on Cocoon. The water tasted flat and none of the fish she and Sazh caught tasted fresh to her -- nothing like what she would have gotten on Gran Pulse. She turned her head and glanced at Sazh, sound asleep with his head on his coat, folded up like a pillow, and with a sigh she looked to the sky.

“It’s so hard, Fang,” she whispered, untying the pelt from around her waist. As she rinsed slime from the fur, she felt a tear slip down her cheek. “I’m so strong, but I can’t let them know. Everyone wants to do everything for me -- I just… I want to fight.”

With her clothes hanging from a tree limb, Vanille cast Aeroga and Fire, warming the air just enough to dry her clothes in a snap. Only seconds later she was able to wrap herself back up in her clothes.


End file.
